Amazon to buy Roomba maker iRobot for $1.7 billion

Amazon wants to acquire iRobot, the company behind the well-known Roomba vacuum cleaner robots, for 1.7 billion dollars. Converted that is 1.67 billion euros. Amazon is offering $61 per iRobot share, which is 22 percent more than what the shares cost in the market.

the deal is not yet final; it must be approved by the shareholders of the US company and the US competition authorities, but iRobot itself has already agreed. If the sale is actually completed, Amazon wants the current iRobot CEO, Colin Angle, to remain in his position.

To what extent iRobot will remain a standalone company that can continue to steer its own course to some extent is not clear at this time. It is clear that with this acquisition Amazon will acquire a larger share of the smart home market. It already has a fair share of that with its Ring doorbells and Alexa on several Echo devices.

IRobot recently released iRobot OS which should make the robot vacuum cleaners involved smarter thanks to information and computing power from the cloud. Amazon also recently released the robot assistant Astro. IRobot has been around since 1990 and is seen as a pioneer in the field of vacuum cleaning robots.

iRobot Roomba i3+